I don't know about you but there are certain authors I will read no matter the subject. +Simone St. James is one of those authors. I picked up this one and The Other Side of Midnight without reading any synopsis about them. I know she's THAT GOOD! She typically writes about ghosts and a strong female protagonist. I had previously read The Haunting of Maddy Clare and An Inquiry into Love and Death so I knew I would not be disappointed by Silence for the Dead.
Silence for the Dead takes place post World War I in Great Britain and centers around Kitty, a girl on the run from her abusive father who takes shelter pretending to be a nurse in a 'mental' hospital. I use the term 'mental' loosely because I don't think men and women who have been to war are mental. I think they have seen things no one can possibly imagine and they bear that burden forever. I have seen what PTSD from war can do to a human being and it breaks my heart and pisses me off all at the same time. Anyway...Kitty forges some information and pretends to be a nurse who worked at a casualty hospital in order to get a job working at Portis House where the only patients are 19 men who have been in the battles against Germany during World War I. Of course when she arrives, the head nurse in charge, known as Matron, knows Kitty has lied but the hospital is so understaffed she lets Kitty stay. There is something just not quite right about Portis House and the previous owners, the Gersbach's, just up and disappeared one night. No one in the town saw them leave: no moving trucks, no unusual activity, nothing...just gone.
Kitty tries to find her footing and tries to prove that she can do the job of a nurse because she has no other options. She's been running from her father for four years, but in all honesty he was such an alcoholic and just dead beat that he never actually went looking for her. While she's at Portis House, Kitty cannot seem to stop breaking the rules. The rules are very much centered around keeping the 19 men calm because you never know when any loud noise could trigger a breakdown for them. To make matters worse, the house is haunted. OF COURSE IT IS! Let's go and put men who have seen hell in a haunted house and hope they get better. UGH! Early on in her stay at Portis House, Kitty goes into the room of Patient Sixteen despite not having clearance. I spent a good bit of the beginning story wondering just who the hell Patient Sixteen was and why he was treated so differently from everyone else. Turns out, he is Jack Yates, Britain's golden boy of a war hero and no one wants it out that he came back broken just like the rest of them. Think Captain America except not invincible and with some serious issues from what he has seen.
It isn't until Kitty goes on Night Watch that she realizes the house truly is haunted. She sees a ghost go into a stairwell at the same time a patient has a nosebleed and another has a fit in his sleep. She and Jack eventually put the pieces together and realize the men all have the same dreams. There's always a man with a rifle calling them a coward and they just have this gut instinct they're going to die, but they always wake up. Turns out, Mikael Gersbach was a deserter from the military who ended up being dishonorably discharged rather than executed because he was tortured by his comrades who believed his Swiss name was actually German. Another product of war. These men had blinders on for anyone with a foreign last name and an accent. His father, Nils, executed him one night after he returned home. Nils' daughter, Anna, then shot her own father in the heart. Well poop, thanks Anna...now you've got not one, but two ghosts roaming the house and torturing these 19 men who honestly just want a little peace and quiet. A lot of this information is learned from the nurse whom Kitty replaced, Maisey Ravell who actually was best friends with Anna. She's on the outside of Portis House so she begins transporting letters for Jack to the outside world. Much like today's prisons, all mail sent out or coming in to the hospital is read. Maisey is Jack's only way of finding out information without the hospital staff, other than Kitty, knowing. Turns out, Maisey's father, the magistrate had the bodies of the two men cremated and helped Anna and her mother flee back to Switzerland. When Anna's mother passes away, Anna returns to Portis House thinking her home will still be empty. She's sighted a few times but Jack and Kitty never actually get to talk to her so they begin to wonder if she too is a ghost. It's not until the culmination of everything unraveling that they learn she's been hiding in the cellar. Anna herself puts the final pieces together when she reveals she shot her father. What a whirlwind caused by an abusive, hard ass father who obviously never understood what an asshole he truly was. He has no compassion for either of his children. He obviously does not understand what his son went through. Dead is never better, Nils.
In the end, everything works out for the best. Everyone leaves Portis House. Four men die from influenza, some are discharged home to their families, and some are reassigned elsewhere. And of course, Kitty and Jack fall in love through all of this and end up together. I like the wee bit of romance that St. James throws into all of her ghost stories. No one ever goes back to Portis House and eventually it will just crumble and decay in ruin.
I really liked this book because I feel it was a bit different from her others. She didn't necessarily focus on the paranormal activity in this book but rather the men themselves. The primary paranormal activity in this house were the dreams Nils caused these men to have. Yes there were some groaning pipes and black mold in the bathrooms, but the dreams man...the NIGHTMARES. These men were fresh from war so of course they thought they had gone even more bat shit crazy than when they arrived. St. James really focuses on who these men were before the war and who they are now. You know, the main thing I saw with them is they may be broken, but they're not crazy. They don't deserve to die. They don't deserve to be secluded away. And none of them needed to kill themselves. Dead is never better. No matter how broken their mental state or their hearts, dead is never better. I found myself really being on Kitty's side. I felt for her when she describes the abuse she grew up with, but she came out a strong woman. There are moments when you want to scream in frustration because of what the hospital believes to be proper care. When Kitty was angry, I found myself being angry for the exact same reasons. When she wanted to scream in frustration so did I. And when she loved Jack, so did I! :D I just...I just LOVED this book.
Bravo, Simone, on a job well done. Everyone, just go buy every book this woman has ever written and read them. RIGHT NOW! This is one ghost story that goes so much deeper and really hit close to home for me. God bless the men and women who serve their country.
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